


On The Way To San Francisco

by Palpalou



Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palpalou/pseuds/Palpalou
Summary: Takes place somewhere between issues 8 and 9 of  Venom (2018). An unspecified organisation sends someone to eliminate Eddie Brock. The symbiote takes care of the situation.





	On The Way To San Francisco

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place somewhere between issues 8 and 9 of Venom (2018), as Eddie is making his way to San Francisco.
> 
> Just in case you don't like that kind of thing: OFC dies with extreme prejudice.

In a world filled with superheroes and monsters, there was no shortage of occult agencies making it their business to keep an eye on the situation (and more if affinity). Most were rather short-lived. As they grew in influence, they lost in secrecy and became vulnerable, either to public scrutiny or "super" meddling. Some were officially disbanded, disappeared with their funding when their generous patrons felt their precious anonymity would soon be in jeopardy, crashed and burnt either literally or financially if superhumans with a grudge made it their business to see them go down in flames often enough.

The organisation which employed her wasn't one of the longest existing, nor the most prestigious or the most obscure (which would both have been worth praising), but it paid reasonably well, and the business model was sound. Officially, she was a "quality assessment field agent".

She was plump, forgettable, forty looking like fifty years old. Since she had started this job, she had killed more superhumans than she had visited foreign countries.

Mostly, she was charged with what she had heard colleagues refer to as "small-fry" cases; players on the weaker end of the scale, has-beens or not-quite-rising stars who needed to be culled in order to keep the playing board as clean as possible. Mostly, it was a matter of convenience for the organisation. She, from what she understood, was small-fry too. The bigger chunk of the organisation's work was subtler, more political in nature.

*

She received her assignments on white USB sticks delivered to a PO box registered under a false name.

She had a computer which had never been connected to the internet, used only for the purpose of reading though the case files.

[E. Brock] was the name on top of today's assignment. She knew of him, vaguely.

A number of years ago, he had been a second-rate villain in New-York and a touristic landmark in San Francisco, as super-villains sometimes are.

She would have said he had then faded into irrelevance as the Venom name had been picked up by various other individuals, but the file told her he had rather been a participant, although mainly on the losing side, in a topsy-turvy tug-of-war around an alien substance.

Recently, continued the file in short, matter-of-fact sentences, E. Brock had outlasted the other players. And even more recently, he as the Venom had been involved in a large-scale event in New York. The organisation had leads hinting that the Venom was now in the hands of another actor, but judged that their interests would be best served if the name stayed retired and the man, buried.

It did not really say buried on the assignment, which was as well as she usually went for lye. It did say which train she should take so that she would come across Brock's path in an out of the way little bus hub town.

*

The town was called Rieperley. It constituted mostly of a very large bus park, a fountain, a few dozen houses in concentric circles around a mall and a small lawn with a few trees, a fountain and a child's swing. But the children that passed through town were too miserable from their long bus ride to play on the swings.

She arrived at 10:30 with twenty four other passengers. The file told her Brock should have been here for three hours already, waiting for his connexion which would only arrive in the evening. The organisation had arranged it so.

She went looking for him.

There had been a few pictures in the file. The mugshot of man in his thirties, sporting a crew cut, a shiner and a pout under a deep-set frown. Pictures of him as Venom from far away, a hulking black mass which the camera obviously had trouble making sense of. Pictures of Brock, stills from prison CCTV cameras. The man was very built, nearly larger than he was tall. The most recent picture, captured a few days ago, of his profile through the window of a bus, turned out to be the most useful one.

She had thought at first glance it had been blurry and grey-ish, bad quality. But when she spotted a shape leaning against one of the ugly trees by the mall entrance, she recognised the same qualities. There was something faded in Brock, in what little she could see of his face between his dirty cap and unkempt beard.

He was hugging a big, ugly dog against his chest, but she had more than enough to take care of them both in the kit she kept in her handbag.

*

She was already familiar with the layout of the mall, the empty concessions upstairs and the maintenance corridors which no one used during the day. She had already decided where she would get rid of Brock, a hallway on the second floor deep inside the unoccupied part of it. She also had decided the time, a lull in the comings and goings of buses shortly after noon. The few other stranded in Rieperley would congregate downstairs, where the restaurants were.

She spent her time watching Brock from the other side of the mall’s bay window.

He moved a few times, to check the electronic panel showing arrival and departure times. Otherwise, he mainly stayed sitting against his tree, the dog halfway on his lap, mumbling to himself. Or his dog. She thought it was probably himself.

At one point, he went to the fountain and drank water straight from it.

She bought a ham sandwich and a bottle of water from a spotty teenager in a silly paper hat and stepped outside.

When she was a few feet away, the dog’s ear twitched and Brock turned his gaze in her direction. She smiled engagingly and held up the bottle of water.

“I thought you might be getting thirsty with that sun.”

“Oh. Thank you, that’s very kind. I’m not really thirsty.” He had been taken unawares, probably unused to this kind of interaction when most people would keep well away from a scruffy man with a killer dog on a chain. She was banking on it.

“Don’t say that”, she chided. She used what she thought of as her auntie voice, something very like baby-speak, but geared for adults. “Dehydration is very serious business. You should drink before it feels like you need to.” And she shook the bottle in front of his face.

He took it with a slight grimace, and she didn’t give him time to thank her before grabbing the sandwich out of her handbag.

“Here, there’s that too.”

“N-“

“And for your dog, as well! Oh, I didn’t think of your dog!” By that point, she should probably have bent down and petted it, or have it sniff her hand maybe. But from closer up she could see it was truly filthy, with dark and oily fur. And its eyes were covered in a milky-white film. She fought a visceral instinct to step back, although at least it didn’t seem aggressive, or even interested in her. Its head was drooping slightly on the side, like a slightly misshapen stuffed dog toy. “I’ll buy him another one right away. Why don’t you come with me?”

“My dog isn’t hungry.”

She tsk-ed. “I’m sure it is! Look at the poor thing, it’s slobbering.” And it was, but by the state of Brock’s pants she didn’t think it had started with the sandwich.

Brock looked down at his dog and some complicated emotion passed on his face.

“Alright. Alright, fine.”

“Delightful! Now come on, I know exactly where the three of us can have a sit.”

As they walked towards the mall, she slid a hand in her bag, on the side where Brock couldn’t see it. She felt for the small, caped syringes held securely against the lining by discrete clasps.

Cyanide was a very useful substance. It was hard to trace back to a specific provider, because it could be found in its natural state in common fruits or nuts and was easy to produce. It was cheap. It was fast-acting. It asphyxiated the subject, which did a lot to prevent any kind of rational thought in the target, let alone effective resistance. But it was not instantaneous, so she needed to take Brock deep inside, somewhere his convulsions would not attract unwanted attention for the fifteen to twenty minutes she would need.

*

They went up an elevator to the second floor, then she directed Brock to a corridor down the side, behind heavy fireproof doors. The dog kept pace on the left side of Brock, head hanging low.

“That way now, you see? There is a lovely sitting area on the other end of the hallway, tables as well!” She leaned mock-conspirationally towards Brock. “I found this place looking for the loo!”

Brock didn’t respond to that, but she didn’t expect him too. Only a few more instants and she, too, would be able to drop the charade.

She had decided she would kill the dog first. Brock obviously cared for it, although he, equally as obviously, hadn’t taken good care of it, and if she timed the whole thing well enough, she would be able to inject him as well while he was busy figuring what was happening to his mutt.

She slipped a syringe out of her bag, a quick flick of her fingernail uncapped the needle. She went first through the door, holding it open for Brock. He followed, then his dog. As it passed by her, she stabbed the syringe into its side.

She was used to the manoeuvre. She knew how to dose her strength perfectly so that the movement would be quick, hardly noticeable if the people around weren’t paying attention, and that the needle would get deep beneath the skin. She knew what resistance to expect, from clothes, the density of muscles and flesh. But just now, she had felt none. It had been like putting a needle through a jellyfish. Like piercing an abscess and feeling pus, slightly warmer than normal body temperature, run against your fingers.

Horrified, she looked down at her hand. Her fingers were smeared with a wet, tar-like substance.

Then Brock started gasping for breath.

*

Brock was biting at the air, clawing at his throat, then his eyes rolled back and he fell sideways to the floor, legs spasming violently, showing all the very clear symptoms of cyanide poisoning. She gaped at him.

But then she saw the chain, the dog’s leash. Brock’s fists were opening and closing violently, and yet it didn’t slip from his grasp. In fact, she could see the part where it was fused into his palm, sinking seamlessly into the flesh, and as she looked at it she noticed ripples running along the chain. Not movement brought on by Brock’s convulsions, but the chain itself wriggling, curving like a snake, or like it was made of snakes, or worms, thickening and melting into itself, into the same black oily substance which had disgusted her so much previously.

From the corner of her eyes she caught an impression of a growing, bubbling mass. And she remembered that the dog was on the other end of the chain, which wasn’t a chain, and this wasn’t a dog, and she was showing it her back.

She should have started running. She was very aware of that fact. She was also perfectly, bitterly aware that the only way out of the corridor was behind her, on the other side of the swarming pulsing boiling thing.

Fear had taken a hold of her now, and the last thing she wanted was to look behind her, but at the same time how could she bear not to?

Feeling like her legs weren’t answering her correctly, she took a half-turning, half-shuffling step.

The shape of the dog, now reaching up to her shoulder, bowled into her side.The impact projected her to the ground by Brock’s still convulsing body. He was foaming at the mouth.

The dog's distended jaw closed on her upper arm and shoulder, and she screamed.

It did not feel like a bite. It felt like the marrow was sucked out of her bones, like every cell in her body was being emptied of its vital substance and crumbling into itself. She was nearly completely covered in the black stuff, and so was Brock. She could see it gathering around him, creeping up his neck, slipping inside his nostrils and tainting then covering the sclera of his revulsed eyes.

She could feel it against her own skin.

She couldn’t move.

The pain was immense. Her nervous system was exploding in a supernova of alarm bells which her brain was not equipped to handle. It would soon fry from sheer overload, but a last message reached the small surviving part of her consciousness.

She felt short of breath.

She felt short of breath. The thing was not blindly killing her. It was using her body to assist Brock’s. It was giving him her oxygen.

This was her last thought. Born and dead in the space of a few microseconds before, mercifully, those last few brain connections were finally reached and annihilated by the shock-wave coursing through her brain matter.

The latter survived her conscience by a few minutes, but only that. A not insignificant part of it went towards repairing whatever damage the brief lack of oxygen and convulsions had caused Eddie Brock’s body. The rest of it was absorbed by the symbiote.

Things were happening very slowly, very deep inside its structure nowadays, and its effort had exhausted it.

Its host wasn’t awake to think the parameters of its dog form, so it slipped back inside his body through the palm, up the brachial artery and coiled around their heart.

There, it too slept.

*

**Author's Note:**

> *just realised writing this fic (10/12/2018) that misshapen is probably pronounced mis-shapen and not mis-happen like I always thought before ^^ Learn a new thing every day!  
> **”Sandwich is fine but what my dog would really enjoy is just like. Some chocolate. If you’ve got that.” “Chocolate? Chocolate for your dog? *sponge bob face* C H O C O L A T E, F O R Y O U R D O G?”


End file.
